Are you an starving artist looking for some affordable digital tools? We’ve posted before about open source software. However, I just have to jump in again and focus on Graphic Designing with Open Source. I work on a Mac, PC and even an Ubuntu Linux box. Professional Graphics Software isn’t cheap. So I let my Boss buy it for work. Adobe is great, and pricey. My heart is with the following software. All available for all platforms I use.
Inkscape (Illustrator equivalent)
Pros:
- The Best Auto trace anywhere.
- SVG native format- (one of Illustrators default save options)
- PDF editing well underway- not fully implemented
- Diagraming tool works great for planning websites
Cons:
- Color Swatches are not currently able to be saved in direct manner. No Built in Pantone support ( but that is just a matter of specifying the proper Pantone number for printing)
Gimp (Photoshop equivalent)
Pros:
- It’s free
- Regularly updated with fixes and the latest features
- Strong community
- Runs smoothly on almost every platform
- Customizable with plugins and scripts
- Handles almost any format including: bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm
Cons:
- Newest version can be buggy
- No 16-bit per channel color support
- Feature development is slow
Scribus (InDesign equivalent)
Pros:
- It’s free
- PDF compressing is quality
- Works well on Windows
- It is a lightweight program
Cons:
- Lacks the “spell check”
- Need to keep the pictures integrated in your document in the same location on your computer or you’ll lose them
- Doesn’t look pleasant when switching fonts
- Runs slow with multiple pages or large files
- Navigation needs to be updated
- Not enough intuitive
- Documentation is incomplete
Blender (Maya equivalent)
The pros:
- It’s free
- Features animation, rigging, fluid simulations, UV mapping, and more
- Export blender files to different file formats
- Render with your gpu instead of cpu
The cons:
- Slow viewport performance with high-poly scenes
- Layers system is not intuitive at times